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Having a Mental Health Conversation Bothers Me
Use this 4-part model of M.I.N.D to have an effective mental health conversation. This is especially important when working from home.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Amazing. Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning Lunch. We’re just clicking onto the hour. We’re waiting for the people to come into the room. Welcome everybody. Hello. Hello. Good to see you. Good to see some friendly faces, some long-term friends in there, Carolina, great to see you Matt. Fantastic to see you Susan. Great to see so many regular people and new people coming into this space. Excited for today’s content.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you for being here. It means a lot to me. This subject means a lot to me. Just gonna give it 30 seconds. While we’re waiting for the last few people to arrive in the room, let’s make sure we’re setting you up for success. Drinks at the ready. Jason and Vicki, thank you for being here. Tracy again, Gabrielle, thank you. Let’s just get these last people in the room and then we’ll get into today’s content. Welcome everybody. Hello Carolina. Thank you. It’s great to see you here. Thanks for being here. Just gonna give it a moment. Let’s make sure. First things first, phones. Crikey. Where’s mine? Mine’s over there. I dunno if it’s on flight phone yet.
Nathan Simmonds:
As always, let’s get your phones out. Let’s make sure you’ve got them on flight mode. Let’s zero out the distraction and maximize the attention on you. Let’s maximize the attention that you’re gonna give to yourself and your development in this process. As we go through this today and as I share these ideas, that’s one flight mode, two drinks, absolutely. Three. Let’s make sure you are setting up your notepad in the best possible way. Clean sheet.
Nathan Simmonds:
Again, no distractions on that piece of paper. This is about your thinking and what you want to get from today. What you want to down the load from the thinking, what new ideas come up. So at the top of that fresh page, you’re gonna write Keepers, keepers, can I put my children on flight mode? If there was a button for that and either you or I invented it for working from home, we will be very rich people, Caroline.
Nathan Simmonds:
So let’s make sure you’ve got that clean page, fresh at the top. You’re gonna write keepers and keepers are the things you want to keep hold of the place where you want to put the new ideas and thoughts that are coming up that you want to, um, remind yourself of and reinvigorate when you look back through your notes later on. So the objective of today and the objective of that is to write more than three things that you want to take away from today. So Pen’s, paper, app, the ready to take this information off. Last few people I think have arrived, just says, great crowd in today. Great to see you all.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s amazing. I just remembered to take it off. Share screen. Let’s get into the day. So what are we covering this week? Ah, back step. Welcome to Sticky Learning Lunches with me. Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter, the home of Sticky learning. And we are the leadership development and soft skills provider to the grocery and manufacturing industry.
Nathan Simmonds:
I deal with these lunchtime learnings, these micro sessions is to help you upgrade that thinking, help you be the best version of you right now in this current moment when you are working from moment and also preparing you for that return to work that we have no idea is when, when it’s coming due to the confusion of yesterday. But this isn’t a politics discussion.
Nathan Simmonds:
Today’s session is all about the I in mind. So mind is a four stage process that I have designed through my coaching techniques and coaching ideas to help leaders have more robust conversations with the people in their teams that may be experiencing mental health challenges, is to help encourage those leaders actually have the conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Because it doesn’t really matter whether people have got qualified as coaches as mental health first aiders or practitioners. If your leaders are nervous or you are nervous about having that conversation with that individual, doesn’t matter what tools you’ve got, you’re still gonna feel, uh, a reticence to go and do that and you’ll get nervous and huge sways and huge percentages of leaders currently are nervous about having that conversation because they believe they’re going to say the wrong thing or they’re gonna get it so wrong.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s gonna cause more damage in the majority by saying nothing actually causes the most amount of damage by making people feel like that you don’t care or you are not thinking about them, just compounds the issue. You can say anything to anybody as long as it’s done with absolute love and respect and humanity. So as a leader, being a leader is all about being humane.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s about being human, it’s about being emotional, and it’s about bringing that to the table When you’re having these honest conversations with people, as long as you’re doing it again, like I say, with that love and respect, you can have that conversation. You can work with them to help them find their way through because it’s not what we tell them to do.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s not about giving advice, which we, we don’t do as mental health first aiders. It’s about asking the right questions so that person can come up with their own solutions that’s gonna help solve it in the way that’s right for them. Not what we believe or wish to inflict upon them. And as Jeff Birch told me or taught me, uh, last week, you know, is a change inflicted is a change resisted, and it’s through our questioning and the way that we direct people or help them to direct their focus with those questions, that’s gonna help them to come up with those solutions, which is why this model is important to me and to the people, um, that I work with.
Nathan Simmonds:
So, quick recap from yesterday. Question from me to people that were here yesterday or have seen the replay. What did you take away from yesterday that was useful? Fire it up in the questions box. Let me see what’s actually sunk in from yesterday. Let’s build on that because we’re gonna do a super quick recap on yesterday and then we’re gonna go into today’s importance. Four Fs model. Good brain shifting.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely how someone thinking may change when it’s in a crisis. Absolutely. Brain shuts down ownership and getting them to feel safe enough to talk. Absolutely. Brain is a validation machine. Questioning and signposting huge. Guys, thank you very much for taking this on board. Quick recap, mind. It is mindset . The mind is the model mindset starts with yours and theirs.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s not all about them. It’s all about you as a collaboration about making things work. Number two is yes, the mechanics of the brain and how it’s actually working against us and playing tricks on us. But it’s doing that based on 200,000 years of evolution to keep you safe and alive so that you can pro procreate and continue the species moving forward. We just have to understand that part of our brain, which it thinks is doing us a favor, is actually holding us back from progressing or keeping us stuck in certain protective loops that we’ve learned in traumatic or, um, crisis like situations.
Nathan Simmonds:
The way to help shift out of that is asking questions. You want better answers, you ask better questions. Whatever question you put in your brain will create an answer or response based on what you put in the equation that I use for this is HQI equals HQO. High quality inputs equal high quality outputs. Write that down if you need to. HQI equals HQO. How do we wanna shift this? Then when we get into importance, what is important? He says,
Nathan Simmonds:
Importance is the thing that we put on certain parts of our life. The importance that we put on things makes, uh, raises that up in our priorities or our scheduling. So when we look at time management, is it urgent? Is it important? When we’re looking at things that are, um, we’re connected to now, we make decisions when we’re doing house clearances. Okay, well what does this mean to me? What is the significance of this?
Nathan Simmonds:
What’s important about this to me? So importance. And when you look at the mind model, so by the way, there’s gonna be a link in in in the chat box about the, the mind coaching cards, the health, the mental health coaching cards that are designed. The I in in the mind model has a finger. And when we’re talking about important importance, it’s what are you focusing on that know that you are applying your importance and your significance to.
Nathan Simmonds:
This is what the importance is as we point the finger, we then decide what is in our focus. You can only focus on one thing at a time. Other elements may be blurry. And this is how your eyes work. As I’m looking at the camera rather than the image of me down there, I can see the little tiny circle and everything else is blurry. The clock behind is blurry, the light is blurry. I can only look at one thing clearly at a time.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we all do this. You can’t think of multiple elements. You only ever think of one part of it at a single point in time. So the importance is of understanding where is your focus at that moment. When you are dealing with a crisis situation, a mental health challenge or episode or moment, whatever you would like to frame it as.
Nathan Simmonds:
What is the person you are working with or supporting? What are they focusing on? Open question to everyone in the room. When you are dealing with a situation like this, what is the person focusing on that is causing the situation to come up? Let’s see what comes up in the answers.
Nathan Simmonds:
If you are dealing with an anxiety attack, a panic attack, A-P-T-S-D flashback, what is the thing? So the first one that comes up the future, a lot of what ifs. So their brain is making certain things up and the future is an imagined version of what might happen with your emotions escalating and deescalating the elements that you believe are important. The story behind their trigger. Absolutely. So something may have happened and actually they’re applying a story to a narrative. The cause of the anxiety in the past, absolutely the fear of the unknown.
Nathan Simmonds:
So there’s different elements that are coming up in this just seems so relevant right now, uh, with people in isolation struggling with the lack of contact. Exactly this, everybody has mental health, everyone has a different level of mental health and everyone has a different level in different places. So it’s important that we understand that in this intensity, and I refer to it, the intensity of proximity with the people that we’ve chosen to be in, in these spaces with some of these mental health things are really gonna come to the surface.
Nathan Simmonds:
Ones that we may have been using work to distract ourselves with or drinking too much coffee or certain relationships are distracted with. Now those distractions aren’t there. Now we get to see the truth that sits behind it. That’s gonna be the interesting part even now as we’re talking about it. So where the focus is, is more often than not, it’s either on the past experience, well that’s what happened over there.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s going to happen again here or we’re looking forward and we’re making up the idea in our head and we’re focusing on something that hasn’t happened, um, in accordance to what we believe may be the worst case scenario. So we get caught in the wrong space and where the focus is that that’s what then brings up the emotions that go with it.
Nathan Simmonds:
Everything starts with a thought. Everything starts with a thought. Your emotions are quite simply a barometer of the quality of thinking that preceded it. I hope this makes sense. When you look at things, you use this quite a lot, Marcus or Radius, you know, things are neither good or bad. It is the thinking that makes them so, but based on this previous experience, based on what we’ve been taught or indoctrinated with, we will look at that situation and go, oh, maybe Uncle Albert from in 1757 had this problem.
Nathan Simmonds:
And because of that, we now believe as a family that actually this will happen when we go for job interviews, but we do it because it’s a, a safety mechanism maybe from previously that’s causing us to be frustrated there. We’re going into new territory, we don’t know what the outcome might be, and we start to worry about the wrong focuses and wrong elements. Therefore the emotions start to come up.
Nathan Simmonds:
When we understand the importance of where that is, it’s then understanding. So where do we wanna be? The importance of focus. How do we redirect that? Funnily enough, by asking questions, you’ll see how some of this layers nicely when someone is in that moment, when someone is uh, is fixed on that point. Prime example, someone’s going for a job interview and they’re getting really anxious and they’re getting really worked up and the heart rate’s going and they’re like, they don’t know what to think.
Nathan Simmonds:
They’re worried they might make a fall to themselves. They’re nervous. It’s really important to them. And they’re going through these struggles and strains. The focus is actually at that point going into the mistake they think they’re going to make in the interview. That the lack of preparation that may, that they believe they’ve made or that someone else may critique them on, that they, um, are worried about.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, that people might think more, uh, they think more of themselves or they’re above their station for applying for the job. So they’re constantly focusing on all these elements and it’s all about me, me, me. It’s all about what I think people think of me. And just using this one as an example.
Nathan Simmonds:
But then when dealing with this person, and this is a true event for me, I even ask the question, so what are you currently focusing on? I’m focusing on this, this, and this and this and this. Okay, so shift that focus quite literally. Think about all the things that you’ve done to prepare for this. What have you, what have you done to prepare for it? Well I did this, this and this and this. Oh, okay, what experience have you got in this job role? Oh, this, this and this and this.
Nathan Simmonds:
Okay, and what have you learned along the way? Well I learned this, this and this and this. And what are those people looking for? What people that can do that? Oh, okay, so you’re telling me you’ve done the preparation, you’ve got the experience and they’re looking for these types of people. What value are you gonna add to this job when you get it?
Nathan Simmonds:
Well, I’m gonna do this, this, and this and this. So the person starts to shift their perspective and through the questions that I’m using, they’re taking the perspective about what will people think about me? What mistakes am I going to make into what have I done to create this moment? What steps have I taken that have led up to this situation? And what value am I gonna bring when I succeed in this? Whether I get the job or whether I don’t, what do I still bene? How do I still benefit, um, from being in this conversation?
Nathan Simmonds:
And the focus shifts because we can only look at one thing at a time. You cannot be grateful and fearful at the same time. Now you can only do one of these things in a moment. So when we use the question to shift and see what the, the what people do have, what is unique that they bring to this situation, what can they own? What’s the only thing that they can add? Um, know that’s important. What’s significant about this to them? Now, what would you like to add to this along the way?
Nathan Simmonds:
00:16:58 The question here, isn’t that also aligned to our negative bias as well? Yes, because we learn that stuff and we can unlearn it by using those questions to validate what we are doing. We learn from a very early age, and I think I covered in this in one of the other training that, you know, there’s two fears that we learn. One is the fear of not enough, not good enough, tall enough, rich enough, educated enough, qualified enough, whatever. And the other one is the fear of losing love. If I do this, will people think less of me if I fail, if I succeed? And we learn those very early on.
Nathan Simmonds:
So when we can shift out of that and we use a coaching question to say, you know, to what is going on? What have you done? Where are you going with this? And get them to recalibrate that thinking and kind of, um, to positively affirm that positive confirmation of what they’re bringing to that situation and how they can move through. People can redirect the focus even in the most testing and trying situations. We can still get people in in a moment to readjust, uh, readjust and create a new action to do what they need to do in that moment.
Nathan Simmonds:
Doesn’t mean we’re brushing things under the carpet, we’re supporting them taking a stronger position where they are with a focus to get done what they need to get done at that point in time. Because there will be previous behaviors and events that have caused these responses and reactions which are gonna hold us back when we come in with with our own mental health. So the importance is what are they focusing on and helping them to redirect that focus with the questions that we, we are using. And by the way, I’m gonna get say again, the mental health coaching cards.
Nathan Simmonds:
They’re on the website. They are five pound huge value for what you get in there. Huge raft of questions in there. Some of them are already started sharing with you. But what is important or challenges? And where I start, what I started talking about was it’s the importance we put on things. The, the difficulty. We have this, as we raise the importance up on it, we start applying internal pressure into our own head, into our own psyche.
Nathan Simmonds:
00:19:07 And when we believe that something becomes so important as a job interview, as example, ’cause there’s millions of those happening every day. This job is all important to me. It is all, um, encompassing to me. I cannot think of anything else. If I don’t get this job, people are gonna think I’m an idiot. People I’m, I won’t be able to pay my credit card bill. Um, I won’t be able to do that if I get the job. But yeah, if I get the job, people are gonna think this of me.
Nathan Simmonds:
And um, then I’m gonna struggle to to keep up with the other people in the department and, and I won’t know what they know. And we start getting ourselves caught up in these loops. But the importance level goes up. So does the pressure level. So as we put more importance on something and we raise that pressure, we start to create a, um, a kind of a positioning attention.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when we start putting that pressure on, whether it’s quantum, newtonian, astro, whatever, the moment that you apply pressure, you create an opposing force. That opposing force psychologically is that importance that we’re applying to. It then gives us something to push against and it starts to become, um, difficult, uh, and obtrusive because there’s always that thing that’s pushing against us rather than relaxing into it and being firm in our mental position, our physical position.
Nathan Simmonds:
And again, okay, well I’ve done this, I’m doing this, I’m working with this. Okay, I’ve got these great experiences, this is how I’m gonna approach it and you know what? Even if I don’t get the job, this is how I’m gonna move forward. This is the next step, step I need to take. Okay. I can get the reflections from there, the benefits from there and then I can do that with it.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we’re already thinking and looking at new ways that they’re gonna keep us growing and thriving and developing rather than everything is on this one event. And if it doesn’t go my way, that’s it. Which we see in a lot of situations when we reduce the importance down, we take the pressure off. We are not saying that it isn’t um, is it necessary or there is a significance to it. We just take the pressure down so that we’re not applying that which creates the opposing, um, the the the opposing exertion.
Nathan Simmonds:
Hope this is useful and making sense. So with the importance is creating the focus, we redirect it and we reduce it. What’s been useful from today, crikey is 22 minutes, 20 and I’m on the nose for time. 20 minutes. Hope that was useful. On a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being absolutely, how useful is that for helping to work in mental health conversations?
Nathan Simmonds:
Couple of tens coming in. Good, thank you. Really appreciate it. It’s a very different way of looking at when we understand how people are think and how people are focusing on where they’re putting their importance and the pressure that they start to build up in that in their head as a result of where they’re looking. Depending on where you look at something depends on what you see. Uh, and the redirection effect on the focus.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely. Where can I find yesterday’s video as I was on annual leave and couldn’t get it online, Adam? Absolutely. We can sort that out for you right now for yesterday’s video. Focus on redirection is good. Absolutely. What questions have you got for me? Now we’ve got a little bit of time to play with more than normal. What questions have you got for me right now to help you strengthen those questions that you’ve got A couple of people asking for yesterday’s video.
Nathan Simmonds:
We shall get the links for that in in the below. And while those questions come in, we’re also gonna put the link in for tomorrow’s. If you have not registered for tomorrow, now is the time to make sure you’re registered for tomorrow. We’re gonna be covering the end from the mind model tomorrow. Make sure you’re registered for tomorrow. This is just gonna get stronger and stronger as the week goes on.
Nathan Simmonds:
Watch the replays, watch yesterday’s getting for the rest of the week. ’cause this is just gonna give you a really robust framework to develop those conversations with the people that are most important to you. Those in your teams questions coming in. How do we keep focused and stop the past creeping up for ourselves? Good prime example for this, how do we refocus? So imagine you’re gonna do a public speech for the first time.
Nathan Simmonds:
You’re gonna present in front of an audience, you know, and if you’ve done this already and you’re working in your teams and you are delivering um, monthly numbers, et cetera, okay, this is gonna be normal. But imagine it’s your first TED Talk. You’ve been asked to present on a TED stage and deliver something you’re really passionate about.
Nathan Simmonds:
What often happens when we’re dealing with public speaking and these and you know, we start thinking about the mistakes we’re gonna make. What will people think of us? You know, what outfit am I wearing? Is my makeup good? Um, will they hear what I’m saying? Is it we start getting, we start going through all the challenges, all the challenges, all the challenges, and we get stuck in the problem and we start complaining about stuff. And I’ve said this before as a mentor taught me, you know, complaining is the glue that keeps you stuck to your circumstance.
Nathan Simmonds:
And as I understand it now is you cannot activate solution or thinking while you are complaining. So we get caught in this moment when we shift out of ourselves. ’cause it’s all about me, me, me. Do I look know, how do I look in this outfit? Is this right? Is that right? Well, they, no. What will they think of me? Da da da. It’s always me, me, me. Actually, what is it I’m here to give to these people? What is it I’m here to provide? What message am I? No, what’s the reason these people have asked me to be here?
Nathan Simmonds:
And how do I deliver that message? So we shift the focus in ourselves by asking those questions about why are those people sitting there? What’s the reason they’ve asked me here to deliver this content? And by shifting that is we help to, to create a different dynamic of it in our own. Think, think in our own head. Then when we’ve done that, we can then get on with it. When we’re doing this in dealing with mental health situations, again, it’s just getting out of our own way. You know, this person that I am helping is the most important person in the conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
It’s not about me. And there was always with coaching, with, with mentoring, with mental health, with giving feedback. Who is the most important person in the conversation? And when we remind ourselves of that, we take the focus off of ourselves, put it onto the other person because they are the most important person in the conversation. Who do I want to be in relation to this person? I want to be the person that’s gonna help them make the next best move.
Nathan Simmonds:
I want to be the person that’s gonna provide ’em the piece of information they need in order to develop and grow. Uh, Robert Erso, one of my favorite quotes, we rise by lifting others. But if I’m always worried about what people are gonna think about me, I’m gonna be crushed under the weight of their opinion. The good opinion of other people. Goop as a mentor, again, the same mentor taught me before will get crushed under the weight to that rather than thinking about how I can then climb up, pull people up and elevate and so on and so forth.
Nathan Simmonds:
How to make leaders aware of that, that that they don’t do that they repetition. Just because when I share, um, in the nicest possible way, I share uncommon things in uncommon ways and people go, ah, because there’s a shift in psychology. They can see why they ask certain questions or why they approach certain things. Because of the stuff that I’ve learned. Not everyone’s had these experiences. And it’s the, the same for all of us is we have no right to tell someone else what to do. The only thing we can do is two things, be the example and be the invitation. So we do what we do by example, by osmosis, by delivering the best possible, um, viewpoint.
Nathan Simmonds:
An example now, and we still catch ourselves when we make mistakes, but holding our hands up to say, you know what? I didn’t go the right best route. I, I wanna improve that. When we turn up and we show these behaviors and we let other people see that it then encourages them to shine and be in their full potential. But we have no right to tell anyone what to do if they don’t wanna do it. It’s up to them. If it’s detrimental to the business, to the brand, to the reputation, that is a different conversation. One to be facilitated by HR leaders, whatever.
Nathan Simmonds:
00:27:34 When we wanna do it as leaders though, we have to show, and I I give a horrendous example where a group of I believe horrendous, a group of of um, freshly qualified mental health, first aiders. And I get called by a team leader and says, I spoke to um, so and so who is the mental first aider? And they told me to come and see you because they were too busy ’cause they were going into a meeting.
Nathan Simmonds:
In that example, who is the most important person in the conversation? And is that okay? Yeah, the answer is the person in with the problem. That’s the person that’s most important. The person that said, no, I’m too busy on going to a meeting to them. Who was the most important person in the conversation?
Nathan Simmonds:
I’m sure as grass is green. It wasn’t the person that’s got the situation or the problem. And that’s not okay. So when we take that shift off ourselves and we go and be the example, it doesn’t matter what is happening for you at that moment. If there is a mental health or physical health, um, necessity for response, everything else stops so that you can go and resolve and be in that moment because the person you are working with is the most important person in conversation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Just because you cannot see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure if that person was a physical first aid and the person was bleeding out, then they would’ve got involved because they could, it was tangible. Because mental health isn’t tangible. We, we, we don’t wanna interact with it. The other part of that is, it’s getting deep on this question.
Nathan Simmonds:
I like this. Thank you very much for this one. The other part of that is, is how vulnerable are you as a leader? Whether you are an HR leader, whatever. How honest are you with yourselves? Vulnerability isn’t a weakness. Vulnerability isn’t honesty. Vulnerability is the, um, capacity to be open, to be wounded is one of the dictionary definitions of it doesn’t mean that you are weak. Now, in order to be vulnerable, it means you need to do your own healing. You need to do your own reconciliations in order to be able to help other people. Uh, Garbo mate refers to the wounded healer.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now, you cannot be a healer. You cannot be a practitioner in these spaces unless you’ve healed your own wounds. ’cause all you’ll do is you know it’s gonna cover everyone else in your blood and cause more problems. And it’s the same with leadership. Right now we have a crisis of leadership for varying different reasons. And we have a lot of wounded leaders that are in positions of power and organizations, countries, geographical, whatever, that haven’t reconciled and dealt with their own pains and their own, uh, challenges and their own traumas. And then just inflicting that on other people.
Nathan Simmonds:
00:30:29 So you may find in some of those leaders that aren’t necessarily wanting to do it themselves is because they, they in turn doing that, they have to face up into themselves of that fear potentially of going and processing some of this stuff that’s happened to them. And as I said yesterday, trauma is relative to every individual prior that went in.
Nathan Simmonds:
Thank you. What other questions you’ve got? You know what, let’s, if there’s anything else, let’s, let’s bring them now because this is important stuff. Any other questions right now for me regarding the I and mindset around working with leaders in mental health conversations?
Nathan Simmonds:
If not, I’m good. You’ve got your link for tomorrow’s session. Please make sure you are registered for tomorrow. We’re gonna continue this momentum of thinking and development. If you haven’t got a copy of the mental health coaching cards, they are available on our website to purchase now. Thank you very much everybody for your support today. Thank you very much for being here. If you have any other questions, let me know.
Nathan Simmonds:
Email us, bring them to the four, bring them to tomorrow’s session. One o’clock be here. Same sticky learning time, same sticky learning channel. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you very much. Cheers. Bye.
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